


raise a glass to absent friends

by The_IPRE



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Campaign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_IPRE/pseuds/The_IPRE
Summary: Hamid shows Azu a bottle of wine with a smile. “A toast to friends?”Azu returns the smile. “To both those here, and to those who we wish were here.”
Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Azu
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	raise a glass to absent friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimabutch (CWoodP)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWoodP/gifts).



> Thank you for the prompt!

A _clang_ echoes across a Cairo alleyway. “I don’t know how Sasha was able to do this so easily,” Azu says, frowning up at Hamid. His legs tap against the wall from where he is sitting on the edge of the roof and he gives her a grin, one tinged with a sadness that will likely never fully leave.

“I would imagine years of practice had something to do with it!” Hamid calls down. “Are you sure you don’t want me to cast fly? I have the slots for it!” His scaled wings flutter behind him, glowing gold with the light of the setting sun.

Azu blows out a sigh, easing it with a smile. “Fine. Thank you, Hamid.”

“Oh, it’s no problem!” He spreads his hands wide, speaks a few words, and a weightlessness settles over Azu that is no less strange for its familiarity.

Her ascent is admittedly ungainly, a mix between swimming and climbing invisible steps, but at least she is able to make it up to the rooftop. Ever-courteous Hamid is carefully not watching her climb, instead looking out over the Cairo skyline.

She joins him and the sight returns the breath to her lungs, easing a tightness she had not even sensed making its home in her chest.

The city is still a comfort to Azu, despite the fact that she had not lived there for long before being swept up in a quest to save the world. It had been the last bastion of security before that, a home where everything was certain, where her goddess was but an unquestionable prayer away.

It had been where she had met the adventuring party that would change her life, what felt like years earlier.

Azu sits on the ledge next to Hamid.

“The skyline’s changed,” he says, and she nods. The world changed, and they changed in opposition to it, but even from this rooftop she can pick out the graceful curves of the Aphrodite temple.

“It has,” she says, and he nods. There is more in ruin than there was when either of them lived here, but the sand storms died with the krakens. Greenery is dotted around the city now, able to grow without the threat of choking sands blocking out the sun.

There is a small sniffle from beside Azu. “I wish they could have seen it.”

Hamid’s voice is heavy around a sob and Azu pulls him close in a familiar motion, wraps an arm around his shoulders as they watch gold outline the city in the final moments of sunset. Azu rests her head atop Hamid’s. She does not have the words for this, but she does not have to. “I know.”

Hamid sniffles for a few minutes more as the sun sets, sky darkening and stars beginning to glimmer. It is nothing like the dazzling constellations Azu had once been used to back in Kenya, a sky free of light pollution that lit up with more stars than she could have ever hoped to count, but the night is cloudless and the breeze is brisk and warm and so she watches as the darkness skulks in.

Time passes. Suddenly Hamid pulls himself away with a start, prestidigitating a handkerchief to wipe his face. “We’re supposed to be celebrating them! I can’t be- I can’t be crying!”

“There are many different ways to celebrate someone’s life,” Azu says, tilting her head to look up at the sky. “You are right, though. Grizzop probably wouldn’t have appreciated your tears.”

“At this point, Sasha would have definitely slunk off, like a- a well oiled…”

“Bag of ferrets?”

Hamid laughs wetly, and Azu joins in. “She was always much better at similes.”

“She was very talented.” The warmth of the stone roof soaks into Azu along with the memories. “Are the scorch marks from her juggling still on your family’s ceiling?”

“I can’t imagine that they would be, not after all this time.” Hamid is quiet for a moment, hands worrying the handkerchief before it fragments back into the magic it was created from. “Oh! Speaking of that day, it’s not quite orcish moonshine, but…” He shows Azu a bottle of wine with a smile. “A toast to friends?”

Azu returns the smile. “To both those here, and to those who we wish were here.”

Hamid lifts the bottle, takes a swig, passes it to Azu. She drinks and hands it back, not commenting on the fact that it isn’t much stronger than grape juice. This is more for the memories of friends, anyways, and as fun as it was to drunkenly search for Sasha with Grizzop swaying on her shoulders, it was a quite singular experience that she wouldn’t be looking to repeat, even if she could.

Instead, Azu appreciates the faint buzz, the gentle breeze, the exchange of stories between her and Hamid. Tales of climbing a giant desk, of defeating grumps in a bar, of chance meetings forming bonds that had no reason to grow as strong as they did.

A thief, cornered in an Upper London alleyway, and the strangers that stood up for her.

A goblin, stuck in a queue and fighting to do the right thing.

A party, huddled in a sandstorm.

They talk, and the bottle grows light, and the full moon rises in the sky behind them to coat the city in silver.

Azu borrows Hamid’s crossbow, both laughing at how tiny it is in her hands, and she fires a shot for Grizzop. At the pained shout that follows, she channels a frantic positive energy for him as well.

Hamid tries talking to the small sphinx on the corner of the roof, burying his face in his hands when it makes no move to respond. Azu does not tell him of the conspiratorial wink that the sphinx throws her.

The night passes, and Hamid falls asleep against Azu’s side. The moon is directly above, and Azu nods to it before closing her eyes as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment or kudos, or come talk to me on tumblr at [the-ipre](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com)!


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